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Happy American Thanksgiving everybody!
If you’re reading this from another country, American Thanksgiving is the day on which we feast upon turkey and other hearty foodstuffs in order to fortify ourselves for a full frontal assault on the holiday shopping season.
Also, American Thanksgiving should not be confused with Canadian Thanksgiving, which takes place like a month earlier so the people up there don’t freeze to death:
In Canada, Thanksgiving is tied to the fall harvest season, which arrives earlier due to the country’s colder climate. As a result, the Canadian Parliament set the holiday for the second Monday in October back in 1957, so the weather is still perfect for outdoor celebrations and travel.
Boy, those Canadians are considerate to a fault, aren’t they?
I for one have much for which to give thanks, and in order to do so I will be absent from this blog until this coming Monday, December 1st, at which point I will resume the rampant half-assery to which you’ve become accustomed. In the meantime, I’d also like to give thanks to Classic Cycle for adding this special bicycle to their museum:
Was the racing bicycle perfected at around the turn of the 21st century? One could make a pretty compelling argument that it was…or just let the bicycles speak for themselves.
Also, in international news, The New York Times has now covered the saga of extreme recreational cyclist Sofiane Sehili:
Here he is, recreating in the extreme fashion for which he is famous:
And hey, would you look at that?
Well whaddya know?
Anyway, Sehili says he knew he wouldn’t be able to sneak across the border, but he had to try it anyway:
“So that’s when I decided to try and see if I could cross the border somewhere else, illegally. I was convinced I would fail, because there’s a lot of surveillance in China, and these are two superpowers that are wary of each other. I was not expecting there to be a hole that I’d be able to sneak through. But I had to try.”
After all, what’s the alternative: go back home and get a job? NO THANKS! Sure, there may be much nicer places to spend a month than a Russian prison, but hey, it beats working:
“There were all sorts of criminals there. One was there for stabbing someone, another for statutory rape. There were several small-time drug-dealers, a thief, and someone in for corruption. There were two veterans from Ukraine — and one guy who was there for not having a permit for his gun.
“Being a foreign guy, and not a criminal, you’re at the bottom of the ladder. You’re the last guy to be able to do anything in the cell. They were pretty much all quite short-tempered, so you had to be very careful about what you would do.
Hmmm, sounds exactly like the D train.
As for ultra-recreational cycling vacation events, Sehili says they’re actually getting safer, since they used to be about not sleeping, but now they’re simply about sneaking across international borders and possibly getting jailed or even shot on sight:
In turn, he pushes against the notion that ultracycling events are growing riskier, as participants seek to shave hours off existing records, or even break new ground.
“Actually, I think it’s the other way around,” Sehili answers. “When I got into the sport, sleep deprivation was the big factor — we were trying to get the least sleep possible. But then, at some point, we realised that if you sleep a certain amount then you’re going to be faster and catch the people that did not sleep. In the races that last longer than five days, the winners are those who stop. So it probably is getting safer.”
So basically he’s learned that the race is won in bed, but it’s lost in jail.
And with that, I bid you farewell. Have a great Thanksgiving, ride safe, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.
XOXO,
–Tan Tenovo
